Theory and practice

For anyone who reads Maria's post (linked to below) I should say that although there are some terrible books and papers out there, and her assessment of Muller's piece was probably as ethically real as it appears from my quote, I always feel a bit uncomfortable when I read such negative experiences of reading.

This is for two reasons. Firstly I tend to think that any article that makes you that unhappy is probably not worth advertising. In fact it's not worth wasting any time over and I'm glad she didn't read it to the end. (This is contrary to the traditional 'wisdom' that we should study the mistakes of history so we can learn from them, and I'll write later about why it's necessary to oppose this latter view).

Secondly, there are also loads of great books and bits of writing out there. Much of this is written in extremis: Bataille called writing (amongst other things) the 'impossible': that which we are compelled to do, because of it's very impossibility: that is there's something that drives you to write, but it's outside the realm of the written word, but the words that come out seem to circle and begin to clarify this driving force. Like any force, this is creative. People have published great books from the world of academia and the world of psychology as much as from the world of mental illness or art or stories of life.

These books are people's practice, and I've been meaning for a while now to write something about theory and practice. I want to say that theory doesn't exist. By this I mean that the artificial distinction between practice and theory is both wrong and unnecessary. In other words theory shouldn't exist.

Now I find myself with a good example to explain this better. There are some writers who do amazing things for us. They come in all shapes and sizes, and again some of them write about ethics or psychoanalysis, while others write survivor stories or blogs. This is the writing, and this is what we should spend our time interacting with (and hopefully trying to do). On the other hand, sadly, there is theory. Our history and development have created it. Our teachers haven't always had faith in us: they've said, the original is too hard, read this secondary text which explains it. Quickly most books seemed to become books about books.

We get trapped in the game of mainly just absorbing and regurgitating knowledge that we forget to see and listen to the person in front of us. We really should forget all this garbage: it really is turning us grey.

Spend time reading and writing about proper writing, and about life, and things will keep on moving.

This is our practice - keep it up.